


Woods as Motherhood

by faedemon



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Motivations, Non-Conversations, and in another sense it doesnt take place at all, as the game of cat-and-mouse continues ever on, it is the essences of tim and alex shouting at each other, rosswood, this takes place kinda 'out of time' of the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29747163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon
Summary: “Neither of you understand why I’m doing this,” Alex Kralie says. “I know that. I don’t expect you to understand.”“I feel like we have a right to know why you’re trying to kill us,” Tim Wright responds. His voice is bitter. He is not smoking a cigarette, but wishes he was—if he had one, he’d have an excuse to look away.Alex’s brow furrows. “I can’t—there’s no way to explain it in a way that you’ll accept.”“Maybe it’s not such a great idea to kill people, huh?” Tim says it mockingly. He hates Alex, after all.“It’s better,” Alex says firmly. Tim does not ask than what.
Relationships: Alex Kralie & Timothy "Tim" Wright | Masky
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Woods as Motherhood

**Author's Note:**

> partially inspired by a line from mabel podcast: "we're bad gods"

There are woods.

There are woods, and building, and tunnel and rock and bloodstain and tapes—pit in which burned memories lie—and there is camera. There are men.

Two men sit beside each other on a fallen tree in the woods. One of them is a murderer. One is soon-to-be. Both of them hate each other, and one of them loves the other.

“Neither of you understand why I’m doing this,” Alex Kralie says. “I know that. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I feel like we have a right to know why you’re trying to kill us,” Tim Wright responds. His voice is bitter. He is not smoking a cigarette, but wishes he was—if he had one, he’d have an excuse to look away.

Alex’s brow furrows. “I can’t—there’s no way to explain it in a way that you’ll accept.”

“Maybe it’s not such a great idea to kill people, huh?” Tim says it mockingly. He hates Alex, after all.

“It’s better,” Alex says firmly. Tim does not ask than what.

The woods stand around them, emotionless. This is not a clearing they rest in but an awkward between. The trees do not bother to make room for them; the fallen log they rest on did not take care to fall neatly. Alex’s feet are trapped in a nest of tangled, dead branches. Tim sits on a hard knot. The woods don’t love or hate but they listen. The earth eavesdrops apathetically.

“I have to. The house is rotting,” Alex says pressingly.

“So what? You tear it down?” Tim looks at Alex, who has never been masked. Who has bare and unflinchingly faced the camera, the audience, the listeners.

“I burn it,” he says, and behind him Jay’s apartment catches fire. Tapes melt. “There’s no other way to be rid of it.”

“Tear it down,” Tim says again, stubbornly. “Rebuild.” Behind him, his hospital room licks with flame, and behind him, his shadow, years younger than him, swallows pill after wretched pill, hoping one will work.

Alex shakes his head, almost frantic. “It still lives then. When you rip it away, the rotten wood still exists. Decay—it _spreads_ , Tim. It will come back.” Alex’s gaze presses into him, insistent. It might nearly be pleading if Alex Kralie would ever stoop to that. “You have to kill it.”

Tim hates him. He looks away.

“Who ever let it rot in the first place,” he mutters, wondering without really wondering. “Who left the house empty long enough?” He can feel Alex’s gaze even without looking. Tim has grown acutely aware of the feeling of being watched, with real eyes or glass ones.

Alex huffs, some hint of amusement in the exhalation. “We’re bad gods,” he says. “Building our temples and leaving them to fester.”

 _Fester_ is a good word, Tim thinks. Apt. _Festering_ is what he did in the hospital, in his college dorm, in his and Jay’s motel rooms, at too-young years old lost in that winding core of Rosswood. Those woods— _these_ woods—fester. Left alone to grow something fungal, extant.

He takes offense anyway.

“Is that what you think I did? Brought— _built_ it, then neglected it?” Tim turns to look at Alex again, who never looked away. Their eyes meet, and Alex…

“Maybe.” He says unjudgingly. Or—not unjudgingly but _carelessly_ ; it doesn’t matter. It never mattered. “Or maybe someone else did. Maybe they left it to you, and you inherited it, and you were too young to manage the upkeep. Maybe it was already buckling when it was passed down.”

Tim hasn’t been scared by all of this in a long time. Frustrated, yes, angry and desperate and hopeless, but not _scared_. Fear is for things that are unknown and this old house is the one Tim was born in. He knows its every nook and cranny, but how _did_ he get here? Who brought his infant body into this plague?

Did the house itself drag him in, desperate to be lived in?

He shakes the thought away. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. All that matters is that the house is crumbling, and Tim is still inside it.

“‘We?’” Tim says eventually. Alex does not ask for clarification.

“Eventually the last boards are thrown on the fire,” he replies distantly, scratching the inside of his wrist. Tim watches the red scores, echoes of his nails, fade in on pale skin.

“It’s not your house,” Tim says halfheartedly, and when Alex turns to meet his gaze once again, Tim has to look away. He can’t bear to witness the expression he finds there.

“And still I live in it,” Alex returns, steadfast.

Alex loves him. It’s not romantic, of course, but love rarely is. Alex loves Tim as Sethe loved Beloved, and in the shed of Rosswood he tries desperately to kill all of his daughters before a worse fate can reach them. He loves Tim, and so he dogs his steps, gun and camera held aloft.

He loves Seth and Sarah and Jay and so he kills them.

“It’s not your house,” Tim says again, plaintive, weak.

“Then why did you invite me to move in?”

I _didn’t_ , Tim thinks viciously, and here’s where the metaphor falls apart. Here’s where they become again two men sitting beside each other in a forest, and where the monster returns to monsterhood, and where Tim hates Alex so much he can’t breathe, and where love doesn’t fucking matter when bodies litter the path behind you.

“I’m going to kill you,” Tim says, and he means it. His biggest fear has always been his illness or his monster making him into something he’s not, something worse, something that harms others, but he’s already _been_ that. Masky was and is and persists in being.

Killing Alex is different. It’s not vengeance or justice or anything justifiable. It’s just _want_.

Alex smiles vaguely. “Maybe,” he says, the trees bending in behind him.

That’s fine. Alex’s inane love, determined violence—it’s all _fine_. Tim will be the last one standing in the end; he was always going to be. These are his woods. This is his monster.

This is his rotting house.

**Author's Note:**

> "alex kralie wasn't problematic because he was a girlboss" 25 likes
> 
> hey lol. i like this show a stupid amount. recently i went through every single page of this fandom tag and marked for later All of the fics i want to read and i am steadily working through them. why am i like this
> 
> anyway leave a comment if you liked this! i love these kinds of non-conversations in writing n i hope yall do as well. :]


End file.
